


This Is Not a Symphony

by sabinelagrande



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Beautiful Women With Cellos, Crymaxing, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Fraction You Brought This On Yourself, M/M, Multi, Natasha Romanov Is A Troll, POV Second Person, Phil Coulson Should Really Calm Down, Polyamory, The Cello Is Not Metaphorical, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It might be a love song. You're really not sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not a Symphony

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to shadowen for her help. <3

Clint cries when he comes.

You thought it was a joke, something Natasha made up to embarrass him; you didn't think they'd even fucked. But no, he's underneath you and you're pushing into him and he's begging, broken, incoherent, and when he falls over the edge he lets out a shuddering breath, and tears roll down his cheeks.

You don't bring it up. You still don't know if Natasha fucked him, but you don't really care to.

\--

You've never met Kate Bishop. You could have, probably should have. But by the time you and Clint got together, in a sense that was more than just traded handjobs on missions, in a way that included actually seeing into each other's lives, she was already living in California. 

Clint doesn't want to talk about her.

When you get him to talk about her, he won't stop; you're pretty sure he doesn't know about how his face lights up, how excited he is. Or maybe he does, because there's always the point when he catches himself, clams up, looks ashamed.

You're fairly positive that Kate isn't his ex, though.

\--

Sometimes you kiss away the tears. Sometimes you don't. You still don't know what they mean, what any of it means. You're not any good at this, not any better than he is. The only difference is that all that time he spent bed-hopping- he'll cop to it- you spent alone, afraid to get your heart broken, afraid to break someone else's. Even that makes you more similar than different; you just built your walls of different bricks.

That thought terrifies you. If he's just as bad as you at this, then there is no safety net, no reserve force. If you have to be the strong one here, then you're both probably fucked. 

You don't know why he stays with you. You don't know why he doesn't cheat; you know that he doesn't cheat, because when it's not for work he's fucking horrible at keeping secrets. But he stays. It's scary. 

\--

Kate eventually moves back. You still don't meet her. Clint doesn't see her much. You know he wants to, but it's fragile between them. You know what it looks like when Clint's trying to be delicate, the way he lumbers around and stumbles, somehow so much more maladroit when the situation actually calls for finesse.

You're confident Kate's not his ex, though.

\--

You do ask Natasha about the crying, eventually. Turns out they didn't do it; Bobbi joked about it, annoyed Clint with it. Clint shrugs it off, but you wonder how he actually feels about it.

You ask Natasha about that too. She just says, "You were going to see it anyway."

When you think about it, you don't remember her ever mentioning it when other people were around.

You will be one step behind Natasha until the day you die for good.

\--

You finally meet Kate. You're outside of Stark Tower; you just wanted a bagel and coffee that wasn't Stark Roast, because you're convinced the pun makes it taste worse. You're standing there waiting for your caramel latte- whole milk, one sugar, because when no one's watching you don't need to maintain your rep- and you see her out of the corner of your eye. You know it's her, of course you know, you would know from the aggressively purple outfit if nothing else. 

You wonder if you should pretend not to.

She's not an idiot, and there's a ninety percent chance she knows what you look like. You just wonder if you're both going to maintain the polite fiction that you haven't seen each other, that neither of you are incredibly observant by trade. 

You decide you're not going to be the one to break it. You just take your coffee when they call the name you've given and pick a table by the window.

She sits down across from you a few minutes later. You try to act neutral, like you don't feel trapped, caught out, threatened, defensive. You don't know if you actually feel any of those things, but better not advertise it either way. 

"You're sleeping with Clint," she says, no prelude, which honestly doesn't seem that weird given what you know of her.

"'Phil' is fine," you tell her.

"Do you want me to tell you I'll break your legs if you hurt him?" she asks.

"Are you going to break my legs if I hurt him?" you ask.

"If he gets hurt, it's because he did it to himself," she says. She's in no way wrong, but it still hurts to hear. "So I think maybe it's more useful if I tell you to be patient with him."

"Does it work?" you ask.

"I dunno," she says. "I suck at it."

"I'm-" You stop, looking for a phrase. You are in it for the sex, so that doesn't seem right; you think it's pretty serious comparatively, but Clint would shit himself if he found out you'd said that. "We're not just having sex."

"I know," Kate says. "I wanted to make you nervous and defensive."

"Not bad," you allow. "You shouldn't have told me that, though. You could have kept me going longer."

"Eh," she says. "I didn't really have a reason to. You're probably fine."

You don't know quite what that means, but you let it go. You talk for a little while longer, but you don't extend it past the time it takes to drink your latte. 

Then you go your separate ways.

\--

You tell Clint about it later, not that night but the next. You're lying in bed, and he's clinging to you in that way that he does when he wants to fuck, his face pressed into your neck, his teeth nipping at the sensitive skin just under your jaw.

"I met Kate," you say, though you know even as you're saying it that it's the wrong thing, or at least the wrong time.

Clint tenses, but he doesn't move. Now you know that he's hiding his face, not trying to be sexy. "Did you like her?"

You don't know the right word, the word that will express what you mean without being completely the wrong thing to say. "I like her," you say finally. "She's interesting."

Clint laughs, and you feel him relax against you.

You do have sex after that; you fuck him like you're trying to prove something, make a point, though you don't know quite what it is. When the tears come out, it feels like you earned them.

\--

Kate finds you again. Sometimes she meets you at the coffee shop, sometimes at the grocery store, once on the stoop outside your apartment. You know she's shadowing you off and on. You do your own kind of shadowing for a living, and you already know she's a former-ish PI type; you figure she probably does it to fill time, something to keep from getting bored.

You don't talk about Clint much, not at the beginning. You didn't really think the two of you would have anything to talk about, but she watches Dog Cops and likes the same kinds of music and has opinions about menswear. You find things to say, and it's easy.

When you talk about Clint, it gets hard.

You hear it from both of them, when either of them will talk about it. You hear the same things, only twisted and flipped. Clint acts like a dick and Kate gets frustrated and yells and Clint gets scared and standoffish and you wish you could take the two of them and realign them, show them to each other and tell them where it's wrong.

You don't know how. You definitely don't know if it's your place.

\--

You know Kate's not Clint's ex.

Clint doesn't love his exes, not anymore. 

\--

You love Clint.

That was never an actual question. 

\--

And then one day you fuck up. You fuck up bad.

It's not really so much that you fuck up all at once, that there's a place you can point right at and say, "This, ladies and gentlemen, is where I fucked up." It's more that you realize that you've already fucked up, that you've been fucking up.

You and Kate are talking. You've given up pretending not to be friends; she still sneaks up on you for fun, but you planned today, decided to have lunch. You're talking about music, the Philharmonic; Kate hasn't gotten over that joke yet. She's telling you about her cello, a misadventure she had with it one time.

"I'd love to see you play it," you say, and then you pull up short, alarms blaring in your head.

Kate laughs, saying she hasn't played in forever, because she didn't actually hear what you said, not the way you heard it.

You were wondering why Clint didn't cheat on you. Now you think you might cheat on him, and you don't know what to do.

\--

Clint might know what's going on. He might not. He knows something's wrong, you're sure of it.

You fuck him as hard as you can. He doesn't shed a tear. You're screwed. 

\--

It's not easy to get them together. They come up with excuses not to see each other. You refuse to pull a Sleepless In Seattle on them, because they're adults. You just push them around, prod them into it. You plan things, move schedules back and forth. You're not even sure why you're doing it. Do you need him to chaperone you? Do you want to prove that you and Kate can be trusted? Do you want to forget about her entirely, distract yourself with Clint? 

You really wish you knew.

They defrost, but it takes a long time.

\--

You're not really having sex with Clint. He still hasn't left you. That's big and heavy and petrifying, that you have this thing that goes past that, this thing that isn't contingent on giving him what he wants in bed.

But you don't know how long it's going to last.

\--

You look over Clint's shoulder sometimes and see Kate looking at you. You lace your fingers into his and pretend you haven't seen.

\--

"You don't have to do this, okay?" Clint says at breakfast. You've been on a mission for nine days and just woke up from seventeen hours' sleep; you can be forgiven for how you drop your spoon into your bowl of shredded wheat, the clattering it makes.

"Do what?" you ask, despite the fact that you're way past pretend innocence now.

"With Kate," he says, and you swallow hard. "You don't need to."

"I picked you," you tell him, because it's the truth, it's the reason you've been trying so hard. "I'll always pick you. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let it get as far as it did-"

Clint looks at you strangely, and shit, did you just confess to the wrong thing? You just confessed to the wrong thing.

"What are you talking about?" Clint asks.

"You first," you say, because really, he started it.

"You don't have to go out of your way to put us back together," Clint says. "I appreciate it, but we're working on it. It's just taking us a while."

"Oh," you say. "I'm glad to hear it."

"Now tell me what the fuck you're talking about," Clint says flatly. 

"I almost cheated on you with Kate," you say, because there's no hiding, because it already feels like it's weighing you down, waiting to rip its way out.

"Define 'almost,'" Clint says. His voice is quiet, the way it gets when he wants to scream. 

"I told her I wanted to watch her play the cello," you tell him, and as soon as the sentence leaves your mouth, you realize how godawful stupid it sounds without context. "It's- I was hitting on her," you say, and you don't sound any less like a dumbass. "Also we exchanged glances. There were glances."

Clint shakes his head. "You are so fucking weird."

"It's a big deal," you say defensively, wondering why you're trying to prove you wanted to cheat.

Clint puts down his coffee pot, coming over and putting his arms around your neck. "If you've put up with me this long and your hottest fantasy is watching somebody else play the cello, you're a fucking saint."

"You deserve better than someone to put up with you," you tell him. "You deserve everything."

Clint kisses the top of your head. "Okay."

You find that fucking infuriating, but you don't say anything. 

\--

It's a week later. You're at a coffee shop with Kate, the same one you started at, but it's late. You're both frazzled, and neither of you should be allowed caffeine. Kate ate a blueberry crumble thing, and now she's tapping her fork against the empty plate. The noise is incredibly fucking annoying after a minute, and you grab her hand to make her stop.

She looks down at your skin against hers, and neither of you move for far too long, the moment stretched and holding, infinitely suspended. 

Kate looks back up at you. "Wanna have sex?"

The man at the table next to you stares, frightened, like he thinks you're going to do it right now, right over the table.

"That's the best you could come up with?" you say. "After all that?"

"Look, the answer was either gonna be 'hell yes' or 'fuck no,' but either way it was gonna be quick," she says.

"Do you want to have sex with Clint?" you ask, and she gets a deer in the headlights look. "Yes or no answer, no tricks."

"Yes," she says.

"Thank god," you say, sighing. 

\--

You don't know how Clint is going to react, what he's going to say, if he'll talk himself into or out of it.

So you jump him. 

Kate holds his shoulders while you fuck him, keeping him there, making him take it, everything you have to give. 

"That's it," she's telling him, bent down low next to his ear, just loud enough for the three of you to hear. "Just let us, Clint. We're going to make it perfect. Only the best for you. Always the best. You're going to get exactly what you need. We'll give you everything. We'll keep you safe."

Clint sobs, starts doing it long before he's anywhere close, big tears rolling down his face, and you trace your thumb through them. They're so good you almost cry yourself, give in to the relief. He probably does it even harder when he comes, but Kate is riding his face, and it seems really rude to interrupt just to check.

You lie together, sated, and you card your hand through Clint's hair, grounding him. Kate, being Kate, has other ideas; she leans over and licks Clint's face, right along the tracks of his tears. You really wonder what the fuck, but Clint doesn't complain. He wriggles a little, cuddling in closer, but he smiles.

Apparently tear licking is just what some people do.

While you're still wondering, Kate swoops in and kisses you. There's barely any licking at all, but her mouth tastes like salt.

You stay there for a long time, holding each other. You don't want to leave.

\--

So you don't. 

She sticks you together when you're both terrified of falling apart. You keep them calm when one of them is about to blow up. You're not perceptive enough to know what he does for you, but his heart is huge, enormous, big enough for three by far.

You thought it would be a lot more complicated. It probably should be, but on the whole, it's much easier than before.

\--

While you wait for nightfall in Buenos Aires, Natasha asks very sweetly if you'd like to go to the symphony, as long as you brought a change of pants. Clint laughs and laughs.

Kate's new cello is arriving on Monday, and just for that, he doesn't get to watch.


End file.
